It takes tons of discipline just to be a stone,
Sitting in the sun and rain, sitting all alone,
Sitting there ignored and shunned as the years roll by.
Don’t you wish you were a stone? “No, I don’t, not I.”

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When the old stone sings,
even crows in the pine tree
stop wagging their tongues.

This is my morning ritual, taught to me by the elders—women I met on holy ground. Turning to the east, I place a poem on my tongue, as though it were a communion wafer. Like the wafer melting in a faithful person’s mouth, I know the poem on my tongue will die if I do not sing it aloud, whether anybody hears it or not. So I sing: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” Five times I sing the ancient words. And after the fifth time I laugh, for things all round me have joined the song: chickadees and caterpillars; butterflies and blacksnakes; mosquitos, mergansers, and marigolds. Everything with breath is praising the Lord. And the song is glorious.